Spiral
by Downside-Left
Summary: Formerly 'Alone'. Zach, in the crazy-house, after the events of Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond. Hints of Hodgins/Angela, Booth/Brennan, and Zach/Female-Character-of-Your-Choice. Was a one-shot, now continued because I liked it!
1. Alone

Disclaimer: not mine

A/N: This happened when I was alone and depressed and feeling highly abandoned by my friends. So I feel like crap, but hey. At least I got something out of it.

Title: Alone

Summary: Zach, alone, in the crazy-house, after the events of Perfect Pieces in the Purple Pond. Hints of Hodgins/Angela, Booth/Brennan, and Zach/Cam.

-*-

Sweets knows, now. He knows that I didn't kill anyone. He knows that I only told the Master where the man was.

But somehow, it doesn't feel like anything is different.

I'm still here, in the mental asylum. I'm still alone. Always alone now.

Hodgins doesn't really visit all that much anymore. I mean, he does, but only once every two weeks. And Angela visits even less often. I never see Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth, or Dr. Saroyan.

No. Don't think about that. Never think about that. Not in here. Thoughts like that don't belong here. Here is a place for terrible people, who have done terrible things. Like me.

I have done terrible things. I don't get to have… that. Never. Not after… things.

I have to get used to being alone, now. My family doesn't want anything to do with me. And I guess my friends don't either.

My family is safer this way. There are still people out there who follow the Master, and I have to protect my family from them. And my friends, too.

I've been alone before this. I've always been alone in one way or another. Alienated by my peers because of my intelligence; ignored by my family because they don't understand, or want to understand, why I'm different. Even at the Jeffersonian, where I was happiest, I was alone. Hodgins was my friend, but he was always focused on Angela. Dr. Brennan was my mentor, but she was focused on the case and Agent Booth.

But I've never felt _this_ alone before.

Like if I fell off the face of the earth, nobody would notice. Like if I vanished, not even my friends would care.

I know this is illogical. I know that they would care, and notice, but… I cannot shake the feeling that I am completely alone in the world.

And I sit, alone, in my tiny dark cell in the Loony Bin. I am King of the Loony Bin. But I don't want to be. I'd rather be the Court Jester of the Jeffersonian than King of the Loony Bin. I'll let Hodgins be King of the Lab if I can just go back.

I hate it here. I hate this.

How did this become my life? How did I get here?

Those questions are illogical. I know how this happened. I know what my choices were. I know what I did. But I still can wish that none of this happened.

And I do wish. Every night, I wish with all my heart (metaphorically speaking) that I had never…. But I did. And wishing won't change a thing.

But I still do. I wish so hard. I wish that we had never gotten the Gormogon case. I wish that I was still at the Jeffersonian. I wish that I had somehow managed to tell her that I….

But I'll never tell her now. I'll never tell anyone, because I will stay here until I die. I will never be free of this place, of my stupid decisions.

My heart is breaking. Metaphorically speaking, at least. And maybe literally, as well. I have never wanted anything as much as I want to be free from everything.

I never will, though.

I will always be alone.

Alone.

Always alone.

-*-

A/N: Well, that was depressing. But it fits my mood, so there we go.


	2. Silence

Disclaimer: is not mine

A/N: So this was originally a one-shot, and then I couldn't stop writing it after I posted it as a one-shot. So here is the next installment in what is NOW 'Spiral'.

Chapter 2: Silence

There are different kinds of silence, he muses to himself as he sits alone in his tiny room. There's the silence of an empty room, echoing and vast. And the silence of people trying not to be heard. That one isn't quite as silent as the first; as illogical as it seems, it's almost as though you can hear their heartbeats, their hushed breathing, as they wish for you to go away, not to notice them, to leave them alone.

Then there's the silence that is painfully awkward, because he said something stupid or socially unacceptable. It's his second-least favorite kind of silence, but he used to hear it all the time. Now all he hears is his least favorite kind.

This kind isn't actually silent. It is constantly punctuated by mutters, cackling, sobs, and outcries. It's the silence of the madhouse, of the Loony Bin of which he is King, where he lives now. This silence hurts. It cuts like a knife, and it won't stop.

He misses his favorite kind. In the lab, on a slow day between cases.

When he closes his eyes, he's back there again.

Quiet mutters and muffled music from where Hodgins is listening to his iPod as he messes around with some particulates from Ancient Egypt. Off-key humming drifting out of Angela's office, occasionally broken by soft grumbles as she eyes her current paintings with dissatisfaction. The clicketty-clack of Cam's heels as she passes through the lab, eyes locked on the papers in her hand, missing the hopeful smile he sends her way. Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan, arguing amiably about something absurd in her office.

It might not be traditional silence, or even actual silence, but it's what he thinks of when he hears the word. It's the sound he focuses on every night, when the screams and wails grow near-deafening, threatening to drag him down into genuine madness with the rest of the inmates.

_His _sound of silence keeps him from killing himself, but every night it grows harder and harder to summon _his_ silence to his ears. Every night, the mutters and humming and clicking and laughter grow fainter as the shrieks grow louder.

Soon, a night will come when he can't hear his silence anymore. He knows that night, he will kill himself.

Illogical as it may be, he can't live here without his own, personal silence.

He needs it, needs to remember them. Her. He needs to remember his old life, and when he was happy.

-*-

A/N: Yay, depressing! But by the end of what I have planned, it will be happy. Or at least, not 'Gahhh I have to die'.


	3. Apathy

Disclaimer: it's mine! No, I lied. It's not. If it was Zach wouldn't have flipped his lid.

A/N: Many thanks to everybody who's read and/or favorited, but I've gotta say it: PLEASE REVIEW! It's likely that if you read, you write, so you KNOW how much reviews matter! PLEASE?

Chapter 3: Apathy

His sessions with Sweets aren't going anywhere. The psychologist can't get into the head of the forensic anthropologist/engineer. And Zach can't really seem to care anymore.

Apathy is a new feeling for him. He's always had _something_ to occupy him, something to work for. His doctorates, the cases. Something new to learn.

Not here, though.

Here, there's nothing to do but think.

No experiments to design, no voice-activated robots to build. No friends who crack jokes at him that he doesn't really understand, but that he likes, because they made him feel included. Loved.

He shuts that word out of his mind. Love isn't for people like him. But he did love. He did.

He'd loved her for a long time, now. Always from afar, never even hinting at it. She had been… otherwise occupied at first, and then he had never managed to summon the courage to even think about….

It still hurts to think of them, even if nothing else really registers anymore. His friends. They don't visit. Well, Hodgins does, but only once in a while. They're all moving on, forgetting him. The others never visit. It would cut so deep if he let it.

He welcomes the apathy; relishes it, really. It numbs everything. Lets him get up in the morning, lets him fake being relatively stable.

He'll never leave here. He has accepted it. That knowledge becomes part of him, as deeply ingrained as his name, or the make and model of his first microscope. He is happy about it, or he would be if he stopped trying to be the robot his friends had named him, and let himself feel again.

He knows how to function in here. Or, how to not-function-while-looking-like-he's-doing-something. He can't do that in the real, outside world anymore.

Even if he's cleared of all charges and set free in the next day, he'll never be able to go back to the Jeffersonian. That was the only place he'd ever fit, really. And no one else would hire him now. Not after….

So where would he go? Home to Michigan, to sit in his childhood home and brood? Back to the apartment above Hodgins' garage, to sit in his room alone? No. These are unacceptable options. They're not even real options.

He has nowhere to go from here. He can't do anything with his life. Why not stay here, where there are reliable meals, and a roof over his head, and the only thing that is ever asked of him is to occasionally talk to Sweets and pretend to be something that he isn't.

He used to want more. But he doesn't really care now.

One of the benefits of apathy.

-*-

A/N: Sad. But it'll get better, I promise! Next one is … well, it's still sad, but less sad than this one!


	4. Rock Bottom

Disclaimer: for fake-saying it was mine last time, I got poked in the eye. I swear up 'nd down it ain't mine!

A/N: WARNING! Use of the f-word, in case you are offended by that. Also, I left it relatively vague as to who the 'she' is. _I_ think it's Cam, but it's up to you at this point. Also-also, many many thanks to cwgirlup and Undercover Vampire Girl, the two most awesome-est people ever, because they reviewed. This is for them! Because they're awesome! THANK YOU! And thanks to you other people who read, but more to them because they let me know that they read it.

Chapter 4: Rock Bottom

Sweets is worried, Zach can tell. He doesn't like keeping Zach's secrets from the others, particularly Dr. Brennan.

Zach doesn't care.

All he wants is to be left alone. He wants Hodgins to stop visiting, he wants Sweets to go away. He just wants all of it to stop.

If he can't be free of this place, this situation (and he knows that he can't), he just wants people to go away and let him sink into depression without being bothered. He wants to hit rock bottom.

He tells Hodgins to fuck off.

The visits stop.

He stops talking to Sweets, stops looking at him. He sits and stares intently at his scarred, ruined hands.

The counseling sessions end.

For two weeks, two wonderful weeks, he is left alone, in silence, to dwell on his apathy.

Then _she_ visits.

They don't tell him that it's her. He just assumes that Sweets is back for one last-ditch effort to try to talk to Zach again. But Zach won't talk. Not to Sweets, not to Hodgins…. Not to anyone.

He walks into the empty little room, sits on the uncomfortable chair and folds his hands onto the ugly table in front of him. And then he hears the rapid clicketty-clack of her heels on the ground, and his head snaps up and his eyes bug out as she walks in the door.

'_That statement is illogical; eyes cannot "bug out". They merely get very wide, a natural response to surprise or stress.'_

She rails at him, calling him an idiot and a jackass. She tells him that Hodgins has been even more upset than usual, that he is barely able to focus on anything since he last visited Zach, when Zach told him to fuck off. She says that Sweets is considering putting Zach on suicide-watch. She swears at him, asking him how the hell he thinks he can put them through this, how he can just sit back and give up. How can he do this to them? To her?

He doesn't hear a word she says.

She is here, in this room with him, for the first time. She never visited him here. He saw her last when he helped them solve Jared Addison's murder, and she had seemed so happy to see him, to spend time with him. He had told himself that she was just being polite, but….

Was it possible that she cared? Did she care for him… the way he cared for her?

No. No, she still thought he was a murderer. Beautiful, brilliant, successful, wonderful women like her didn't fall for murderers.

Never has he been more tempted to reveal his innocence. But he can't, because at least here things are… the way they are.

'_Do not upset the status quo.'_

She snaps at him, asking if he's listening to her. When he shakes his head, still staring at her, wide-eyed, she throws her hands up in the air in disgust and heads for the door.

He asks her why she's here.

She stops, frozen in the act of reaching for the doorknob. She turns to him, and says, not quite meeting his eyes, that she was worried about him.

His heartbeat accelerates, and he asks her why she would worry about him. He's just Zach. He doesn't matter at all.

She marches across the room and slaps him across the face, snarling that if he ever denigrates himself that way again she'll rip his fucking ears off.

They're standing very close together now. She doesn't seem to notice, but he does, and he realizes that he's never noticed before now just how expressive her eyes are.

'_That is illogical. Everyone's eyes express… the same….'_

His internal monologue shuts off as she seizes his head in her hands and pulls him into a kiss.

His entire brain shuts down.

The only thing he can think is _'…oh.'_

And, as he kisses her back, the feeling of apathy lifts, and he can hear sounds besides silence, and he doesn't feel so alone.

-*-

A/N: SEE? Happy! Or… well, not as sad, because he's still King of the Loony Bin, because I'm not sure how to get him out. BUT! He's not alone anymore! And that's the end!


End file.
